About Jim Eber

JIM EBER is a veteran writer and collaborator specializing in food and business marketing. His most recent books include Think Big, Act Bigger: The Rewards of Being Relentless, Raising the Bar: The Future of Fine Chocolate, and The Millionaire Master Plan. He is a two time judge for the James Beard Foundation Cookbook Awards. He lives in Worcester, MA with his family.

As gratifying as the spate of recent stories proclaiming Worcester an “it” city on the rise may be, they often sound a bit like Columbus “discovering” America. There were people here, people. Just because you decided to come west of Swellsley, doesn’t mean we weren’t already here working the landscape for the better. But truth…

How do you retain and show what the holidays mean to you and your family while still making it about everyone else – even if you work with your family? We checked in with some of our favorite families immersed within the Worcester food scene.

Kummerspeck die-hards to experience the five stages of grief (for the aptly named restaurant whose German translation means “grief bacon”) as the restaurant closes with a send-off scheduled for Friday, October 26th.

Craft chocolate requires several time-consuming and labor-intensive steps to get the main source for that food – cocoa beans or the fruit of the cacao tree – from the remote countries they originate to the centuries-old farm in Sudbury, MA where Goodnow creates some of the most acclaimed chocolates.

At simjang on Shrewsbury Street in Worcester, MA, the raw bar is exciting and enticing – a heady mixture of love, passion, and taste with an exotic variety of oysters calling out with their disparate flavors the way no other spot in the region does.

Rob Fecteau of BirchTree Bread Co. collaborated this month with 3Cross Brewery also of Worcester. The dinner was the second (Wormtown was first, Flying Dreams is next) in the monthly series BirchTree hosts the first Thursday of every month with a brewery.